In the 2008 election, Barack Obama received 95 percent of the black vote. 95 percent! That is astonishing! Many experts believe he will receive that same level of support this year. I don’t think so at all. Barack Obama’s pro-abortion stance along with his reversal against traditional marriage was too much for many in the black community. For many, their values trumped race.

Photographer Unknown

Last night a great American gave me a ride in his taxi. He was born in Haiti and came to America for a better life. I asked him if he was going to vote Tuesday and for whom and he told me he was voting for Obama. I asked why and he replied, “Because all my friends are voting for him.” After a three minute discussion about the facts listed below along with my explanation that the economy would improve drastically under a Mitt Romney presidency, he told me he would cast his vote for Romney. I asked him to visit this site with his friends and help them to understand as he now does.

The WSJ’s editorial board member Jason Riley published an op-ed yesterday entitled, For Blacks, the Pyrrhic Victory of the Obama Era:

…

Four years ago, 95% of black voters went for Mr. Obama, and he is likely to win something approaching that percentage in his re-election bid, notwithstanding economic data showing that blacks have lost ground on his watch. When the president assumed office, unemployment was 12.7% for blacks and 7.1% for whites. Today it is 14.3% for blacks and 7% for whites, which means that the black-white employment gap has not merely persisted under Mr. Obama but widened.

No matter. The president’s approval rating among African-Americans is pushing 90%, and a Washington Post/ABC News tracking poll last week found that 97% of blacks plan to double down on him in this election. Racial pride surely plays some part in these attitudes, as does traditional black support of Democratic presidential candidates over the past four decades. But another factor is the abiding belief among civil-rights leaders that political activity is essential for black upward mobility.

Long after the passage of landmark civil-rights legislation, black leaders have continued to focus on integrating political institutions to redress social and economic problems. Demands for black access to the ballot have morphed into demands for “safe” black seats in Congress and “proportionate” representation among elected officials. Mr. Obama’s victory in 2008 was the ultimate realization of this thinking. The Rev. C.T. Vivian, a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr., told Obama biographer David Remnick that King was a “prophet,” and the “politician of our age, who comes along to follow that prophet, is Barack Obama. Martin laid the moral and spiritual base for the political reality to follow.”

Photographer Unknown

Riley goes on to illustrate how political involvement in America by German and Irish immigrants had little effect on their economic prosperity.

Today, Asian-Americans are the nation’s best-educated and highest-earning racial group. According to a Pew study released earlier this year, 49% of Asians age 25 and older hold bachelor’s degrees, compared with 31% of whites and 18% of blacks. The median household income for Asians is $66,000, which is $12,000 more than white households and double that of black households. As with other groups, political clout has not been a precondition of Asian socioeconomic advancement.

There are a handful of prominent Asian-American politicians today, including Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina, but Asians have tended to avoid politics compared with other groups. Between 1990 and 2000, for example, the number of elected officials grew by 23% for blacks but only by 4% for Asians. In 2008, Asians were significantly less likely than both blacks and whites to have voted.

The election of Barack Obama four years ago gave blacks bragging rights, but bragging rights can’t close the black-white achievement gap in education or increase black labor-force participation or reduce black incarceration rates. A civil-rights leadership that encourages blacks to look to politicians to solve these problems is doing a disservice to the people they claim to represent.

Asians, for their part, can point to an out-of-wedlock birthrate of just 16%, the lowest of any major group and a significant factor in Asian success. The black illegitimacy rate last year was 72%. Might it be that having a black man in the Oval Office is less important for black advancement than having one in the home?

The political scientists tell us that Mr. Obama will almost certainly need every black vote he can muster on Election Day. Less certain is whether blacks need him.

[emphasis added]

I believe today, far more African American voters will join women voters in their support of Mitt Romney than the politicos expect. Democrats love to divide and separate Americans into groups and classes, patronize them, and assume they will not think for themselves. Not this time.

Mitt Romney’s vision and plan will lift all Americans. African Americans and women will benefit far more extensively under President Romney by comparison to the failed policies of President Obama. It is a travesty that unemployment among women and blacks is at some of the highest levels in American history. Mitt Romney will begin to change that trend in January.

American Values: “In God We Trust” — “Liberty” — “E Pluribus Unum”

Twitter Follow: @VicLundquist— Dedicated to all members of The United States military and their families

Mitt Romney was very wise to pivot on Barack Obama’s impromptu statement that “voting is the best revenge” and frame the campaign in the final days as a choice between that negative message and Romney’s “love of country.”

I wouldn’t say that if I thought Obama’s statement was merely a slip of the tongue. Rather, I believe that in another unscripted moment, he once again revealed who he really is and the essence of his mindset.

When his soul mate and spouse said that her husband’s ascendancy was the first time she’d been proud of America in her adult life, she wasn’t just throwing out words. She was telling us who she is and what kind of hang-ups she has about pre-Obama America.

At the time she made the statement, she was on the stump representing her husband and speaking for him. They are of one mind on this point.
…
Without revisiting all the evidence pointing to Obama’s grudge against pre-Obama America, we only need remind ourselves of his pre-election comment that we were “five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

That was a chilling statement and unmistakable in its meaning. Obama didn’t like the America that currently existed, and he had ambitions not just to tweak it or implement a few salutary reforms but to fundamentally change it. He wasn’t just talking about getting the economy growing again after the financial meltdown.He was determined to implement structural changes across the board to exact “economic justice” and “social justice” — a pair of familiar lyrics from every leftist radical’s hymnal.

Before Obama was elected, he barked bi-partisanship. Post-election, with a majority in the House and Senate, he rebuffed Republicans – bribing, brow-beating, and twisting many congressional arms to foist his pet projects on ear-splitting objecting Americans. After 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans took the majority of House seats, Obama failed to reach out, failed to lead, then falsely brayed about GOP obstructionism:

In office, Obama has also betrayed his grudge-oriented mindset. He never really sought true bipartisanship. From day one, it was his way or the highway. Nowhere was this more striking than his dictatorial approach to Obamacare, which he willingly crammed down the throats of a dissenting American public. He was not a man who was leading America toward positive change but one who was forcibly imposing his radical will on America and completely unwilling to budge when challenged. “I’m the president.”

Let’s also not forget that during his first two years in office at least, Obama did get his way legislatively. He passed his enormously wasteful stimulus bill, the Dodd-Frank financial reform fiasco and Obamacare, and he pushed through all kinds of green energy projects, attacked and greatly damaged the oil, coal and natural gas industries, expanded dependency programs, stoked racial and class resentments, downscaled our military forces, and otherwise spent federal dollars as if he were determined to bankrupt the United States.

Obama’s failures have caused deep suffering for many Americans:

After all of this, he has nothing positive to show in his record. The economy is still in shambles with no end in sight. Yet he has given us no specifics of what he’d do in a second term except more of the same. In his words, “let’s not turn back now.” Really? Not turn back from policies that are destroying our economy and bankrupting us?

Economic results are not what he’s after, folks. He wants revenge — against an America he believes has been unfair and sinful in the past, a nation that has consumed too much of the world’s resources and been an international bully. And he’s now outright admitted he wants his voters to help him get that revenge.

It’s a relief to be at this place, right here, right now. Today we’ll exercise the right to vote this manipulative, negative, inept, crony cash-slipping, grease-palming, arm-twisting, redistributing, money-wasting, lead-from-behind shyster out of the White House.

We’ll be exercising our right to vote in the capable, confidence-inspiring man many of us have worked for years to put in the Oval Office. David Limbaugh describes him:

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is bullish on America. He’s proud of its founding and its founding principles. He loves and embraces its free market tradition. He is confident in the private sector and believes that the road to economic recovery lies in unleashing the private sector from the oppressive boot of the federal government. He wants America to be strong again.
…There is no question which of the two candidates presented the more convincing final argument. Romney is offering a positive future; Obama is assuring us continued failure. Vote — and pray.

President Truman holds the Torah presented to him by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, May 25, 1948 (Photo: Bettmann Corbis)

Why are American Jews abandoning the Obama administration in such large ways lately? Following the news this year, you would never know that over 800 rockets and mortars were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip? The WSJ weighed in yesterday with two op-eds on Israel. This first excerpt is from one entitled, Israel Under Fire:

If this incoming fire were landing in Texas from Mexico—or in southern Spain from North Africa—it would be a major story. Instead, the world has largely ignored the attacks while obsessing over a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran is a principal arms supplier to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which operates out of Gaza and is responsible for many of the recent attacks. Iran’s war against Israel, in other words, has long been underway.

Could it be that President Obama simply does not care? That is my position. But hey, I’m not Jewish and I’m not the POTUS, so my opinion doesn’t really matter much at all. But a prominent Jewish American’s opinion matters. For those who don’t know this fact, Sheldon Adelson was a major contributor to the Gingrich campaign and later to Romney for their policy positions on the state of Israel. Mr. Adelson penned a great opinion piece in the Journal entitled, I Didn’t Leave the Democrats. They Left Me — Excerpts:

When members of the Democratic Party booed the inclusion of God and Jerusalem in their party platform this year, I thought of my parents.

They would have been astounded.
…
So why did I leave the party?

My critics nowadays like to claim it’s because I got wealthy or because I didn’t want to pay taxes or because of some other conservative caricature. No, the truth is the Democratic Party has changed in ways that no longer fit with someone of my upbringing.

One obvious example is the party’s new attitude toward Israel. A sobering Gallup poll from last March asked: “Are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” Barely 53% of Democrats chose Israel, the sole liberal democracy in the region. By contrast, an overwhelming 78% of Republicans sympathized with Israel.

Nowhere was this change in Democratic sympathies more evident than in the chilling reaction on the floor of the Democratic convention in September when the question of Israel’s capital came up for a vote. Anyone who witnessed the delegates’ angry screaming and fist-shaking could see that far more is going on in the Democratic Party than mere opposition to citing Jerusalem in their platform. There is now a visceral anti-Israel movement among rank-and-file Democrats, a disturbing development that my parents’ generation would not have ignored.

President Truman holds the Torah presented to him by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, May 25, 1948.

Another troubling change is that Democrats seem to have moved away from the immigrant values of my old neighborhood—in particular, individual charity and neighborliness. After studying tax data from the IRS, the nonpartisan Chronicle of Philanthropy recently reported that states that vote Republican are now far more generous to charities than those voting Democratic. In 2008, the seven least-generous states all voted for President Obama. My father, who kept a charity box for the poor in our house, would have frowned on this fact about modern Democrats.
…
Take, for example, President Obama’s adopted home state. In October, a nonpartisan study of Illinois’s finances by the State Budget Crisis Task Force offered painful evidence that liberal Illinois is suffering from abject economic, demographic and social decline. With the worst credit rating in the country, and with the second-biggest public debt per capita, the Prairie State “has been doing back flips on a high wire, without a net,” according to the report.

Political scientist Walter Russell Mead summed up the sad results of these findings at The American Interest: “Illinois politicians, including the present president of the United States, have wrecked one of the country’s potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies—and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state’s distress.”

At times, it seems almost as if President Obama wants to impose the failed Illinois model on the whole country. Each year of his presidency has produced unsustainable deficits, and he takes no responsibility for his spending.
…Whenever President Obama deplores the wealthy (“fat-cat bankers,” “millionaires and billionaires,” “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” and so on), it tells me that he has failed to learn the economic lessons of Illinois, and that he still doesn’t understand the vital role entrepreneurs play in creating jobs in our society.

As a person who has been able to rise from poverty to affluence, and who has created jobs and work benefits for tens of thousands of families, I feel obligated to speak up and support the American ideals I grew up with—charity, self-reliance, accountability. These are the age-old virtues that help make our communities prosperous. Yet, sadly, the Democratic Party no longer seems to value them as it once did. That’s why I switched parties, and why I’m now giving amply to Republicans.

Although I don’t agree with every Republican position—I’m liberal on several social issues—there is enough common cause with the party for me to know I’ve made the right choice.

It’s the choice that, I believe, my old immigrant Jewish neighbors would have made. They would not have let a few disagreements with Republicans void the importance of siding with the political party that better supports liberal democracies like Israel, the party that better exemplifies the spirit of charity, and the party with economic policies that would certainly be better for those Americans now looking for work.

The Democratic Party just isn’t what it used to be.
[emphasis added]

American Values: “In God We Trust” — “Liberty” — “E Pluribus Unum”

Twitter Follow: @VicLundquist— Dedicated to all members of The United States military and their families

Meet my family. Each us are entrepreneurs. Most of us have several employees.

We wanted to share our message, simple as it may be, to potential voters in the upcoming election. Obama’s regulations and impending ObamaCare tax have killed many small businesses like us. When we built our small companies it was with great hope and desire that America would be for us, what it was for our parents… A land of promise and free enterprise. What we see now as young business entrepreneurs, is a bleak future filled with uncertainty.

We plead with the voters of the United States to realize that small companies like ours, are the framework of this nation and employ millions upon millions of Americans. If we continue to fail, so do all Americans. As a family we implore you realize the consequences of this election. Businesses like ours have struggled to keep our doors open for the past four years, we can’t be sure they will last another four under the current administration. Please Vote for the man who will EMPOWER small business, who UNDERSTANDS small business, who REALIZES our potential for good in America.

As a family, we have all undergone immense amounts of risk to start these companies, worked twice as long as the average American to get them off the ground, sometimes not taking a paycheck to make sure our employees are covered before our own needs are met. But even with all that work, we cannot succeed with a government who continues to take the revenues we need to invest and grow our companies. Let us grow, let us offer Americans more opportunities for employment.. allow us pay our employees better. Everyone wins when we have a thriving private sector, and that’s a truth that we know Romney/Ryan understand.

Sweet, sweet, OHIO!

Another Buck Eye State newspaper editorial board has had it with Obama.

★ Romney is their guy!

UPDATE: Governor Romney is not resting on election day! Going down to the wire, HE’S CAMPAIGNING TOMORROW in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Cleveland, Ohio. He and Ann will cast their votes tomorrow morning at around 8:30 AM ET in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Tomorrow morning, after Paul and Janna Ryan vote in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan will head to Cleveland, Ohio and Richmond, Virginia.

Barack Obama Let America Down
…
In 2008, American optimism prevailed and the nation elected Barack Obama its first black president. He was an understandable choice: He was a likeable man with a golden gift for spellbinding speeches that overrode his thin resume. He promised hope and change and created a vision of national unity, an end to venomous partisan politics and a beautiful new post-racial era. He vowed fundamental transformation of America as if that was a good thing. Events of the last four years have burst that pretty bubble.

It turns out, his notion of fundamental transformation was based on a malicious view that America should be cut down to size and put into just another ordinary seat at the table of nations. A view that successful people who worked hard and grew wealthy somehow got it undeservedly at the expense of other people, and so his government should step in and take from the haves and give to those who didn’t work for it. Spread the wealth around, rather than foster the American Dream of a country where anyone is free to use their talents, work hard and make a good living.

In domestic and foreign affairs, over the last four years, Obama has failed as president. He offers only more of the same if given a second term. It is vital to the nation’s well-being that he not be returned to the White House.

Obama’s record as president demonstrates that, despite his charm and glowing words, he can only lead America to mediocrity, a lowered standard of living, and ultimately, the death of the American Dream and the rise of the corrupt welfare state where everyone is equally bad off, except for the political leaders and their pals who live high on the hog.
…Today’s $16 trillion national debt is the size of the nation’s total annual economic output. That’s like owing Master Card your whole year’s wages, and still buying more on credit every day. Printing more money out of thin air to keep pace with the spending will eventually make our dollars worth less, if not worthless, and it’s our children and grandchildren who will suffer the consequences with a diminished way of life.

Obamacare has made employers afraid to add workers, and it’s cost estimates keep rising even as it is estimated to fall millions of people short of its goal of health insurance for all. It adds millions of new patients but has many doctors saying they may quit because of the intrusive bureaucracy and payment limits. Having Obamacare is no guarantee you will be seen by your doctor, or any doctor, in a timely manner. Older and sicker Americans will face rationing of care and could be denied treatments now available.
…In many ways, Barack Obama has let America down, and it’s time to let him go. On Tuesday, vote for a strong and healthy America. Elect Mitt Romney president.

Come through for us, Ohio. We’re counting on you to give Mitt and Paul a WIN tomorrow!

Romney showed as the Republican governor of Democratic-leaning Massachusetts that he can find agreement across the partisan divide. And his vice presidential pick — Wisconsin’s U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville — suggests Romney is serious about tackling America’s fiscal mess.

Romney has an impressive record of success in the private and public sectors. He’s a numbers guy who focuses more on results than ideology. That’s why so many of his fellow Republicans during the GOP primary criticized him for not being conservative enough.

Romney has been a strong leader in business and civic life. This includes turning around many troubled companies and the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Romney better understands how and why entrepreneurs and employers decide to expand and add jobs. He’s more likely to get the private-sector going strong again.
…We endorsed Obama for change last time around. Now we’re endorsing change again: Mitt Romney.

“The State Journal is based in Madison, a very liberal city where few voters are likely to be persuaded to back a Republican. But the state’s largest paper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is no longer endorsing presidential candidates, giving this move more weight.”

Is Michelle Obama thinking about more vacations she can take if her husband gets four more years? (photographer unknown)

Well… How’s this for motivation to GET OUT THE VOTE for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan?

Michelle Obama asked twitter users yesterday: “Imagine what Barack can do in four more years!”

I’ve been with Mitt Romney Central since its inception and I’ve never written an article about Michelle Obama. I didn’t write about the time Michelle said “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” I didn’t utter a peep about the time when Michelle, confiding to then-First Lady of France, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, on her own job as First Lady, supposedly said “It’s hell. I can’t stand it!” (Both later denied it.) Nothing from me regarding our First Lady’s aversion to placing her hand over heart when our national anthem is played. I’ve never pointed out the way the press hits Ann Romney for her clothing choices, but gives Michelle a pretty pass and plenty of praise. No keyboard clacking from me about the time Mrs. Obama went to a food bank wearing $540 sneakers. I didn’t mention the time Mrs. Obama inferred that a vote for Mitt Romney would cause women to die from cancer. I haven’t written about the way Michelle’s ‘Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act’ forces some school kids to go hungry. And, I didn’t post an article about Mrs. O’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in September – the fairytale she presented of her and Barack’s struggles.

Today, the First Lady’s tweet changed my mind.

Imagine what Barack can do in four more years?

Uh, Michelle, you’re killin’ me.

Maybe you’re thinking about what YOU can do with four more years.

Besides all the pricey trips to Martha’s Vineyard, Aspen, and Hawaii, remember in the summer of 2010 when the Obamas encouraged Americans to visit the oil-stricken Gulf Coast and then high-tailed it, lickety-split, for a family vacation in Maine? Remember how shortly after returning from Maine, Michelle Obama then jetted off for a private, closed-to-the-press, luxurious vacation in Spain? (To jog your memory, that was the time she took her youngest daughter and an entourage of long-time family friends and lounged at the ritzy Costa del Sol hotel.) Remember when she and her girls took off for a family vacation and within an hour, her husband followed. She wouldn’t wait for him so we got to pay for two jets!

— President’s Day 2012, Michelle and the first daughters in Aspen, Colorado to ski.
— Christmas 2011, the first family in Hawaii for an extended vacation.
— Summer 2011, in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., for the annual beach break.
— June 2011, the first lady, her mother and daughters traveled to South Africa and Botswana.
— President’s Day 2011, the first lady and first daughters travel to Vail to ski.
— Christmas 2010, in Hawaii.
— August 2010, the first family traveled to Panama City Beach, Fla., for sun and fun at the beach.
— August 2010, Obama spent the weekend alone in Chicago for his 49th birthday bash.
— August 2010, the first lady and daughter Sasha traveled to Spain for a mother-daughter vacation.
— August 2010, summer vacation again at Martha’s Vineyard.
— July 2010, the first family went to Mount Desert Island, Maine.
— May 2010, the first family had a four-day trip to Chicago.
— March 2010, first lady and daughter spend Spring Break in New York City.
— Christmas 2009, Hawaii again for the annual break.
— August 2009, at Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon for a short vacation.
— August 2009, their first summer vacation as first family at Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Video montage of Mrs. Obama’s jolly jaunts at taxpayer expense:

Yeah, Michelle may have more chi-chi-foo-foo-taxpayer-footing-the-bill vacations on her bucket list.

It was a travesty the way the mainstream media made a big stink about the Romneys this past 4th of July for sharing their own paid-for jet ski with family and friends – at their home on Lake Winnipesaukee. Meanwhile, they’ve overlooked Michelle Obama’s love for lap-of-luxury vacations (which comes out of our penny-jingling pockets).

Speaking of expensive jaunts, here’s another point… There’s a stark contrast in how the Obama campaign pays its bills and how responsible and frugal Mitt Romney is – even down to the hotel accommodations he chooses. DO read more here.

Imagine what Barack can do in four more years? He’ll finish destroying the USA.

Here’s what a few other Americans think:

what nightmares are made of -> MT @michelleobama If this is what the President can do in 4 years, imagine what he can do in twice the time.

Their hubris over such a failed record makes one’s eyes bug out and shoot blood! I will not use my last-full-day-of-Romney-campaign energy to go into the havoc and destruction Mr. O has brought upon us. Here’s my summary:

No, Michelle. We don’t want to imagine what your husband can do with four more years! (By cartoonist Gary Varvel – Nov 4, 2012)

NOTE: MRC contributor Vic Lundquist forwarded an important email to Team MRC today. Here’s a portion:

UPDATE: In the wee hours last night after posting this article two important events were brought to my attention:

1. CBS just released the rest of the 60 Minutes interview with President Obama the day after the Benghazi attack. See what it says here at Fox in a post by Brett Baier, who I gave kudos to below. In it the president refused to call the attacks terrorism, notwithstanding his statement at the debate he’d called it that from day 1. It shows the president did not, in fact, take that position until much later, vindicating Mitt Romney in the debate and showing the president deceived the American people (with Cindy Crawley’s help). Byron York and Ari Fleischer both tweeted to ask “why sit on this information until now?” Makes me want to watch the Caddell video again…

As Vic Lundquist reported, some in the media (Fox) have not let this go. Brett Baier in particular has done a great job. And I was moved when I saw Pat Caddell’s comments (video in Vic’s post, and re-included here below).

But today I finally, finally saw a headline that gave me a glimmer of hope about our media and Benghazi. Two mainstream papers are asking the right questions about what happened and why.

The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have just, in the last two days, asked some pointed questions to the administration about what happened. Do we expect an answer before Tuesday? I don’t. And for that it’s difficult to forgive the media, as Pat Caddell says. They sat on this too long to allow the truth to get out in time for it to have an impact on people’s choices Tuesday. Unless you vote for Mitt and don’t let the president off the hook for hiding the ball.

In the Washington Post piece, the editorial board asks the reasons why the facility was so under-prepared when the threats of violence were so obvious?

Fox News reported this week that a secret cable described an Aug. 15 “emergency meeting” at the consulate, at which the State Department’s regional security officer “expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support and the overall size of the compound.”

Fox reported that the cable, dispatched to Washington, said the emergency meeting included a briefing about al-Qaeda training camps in the Benghazi area and Islamist militias, including those that allegedly carried out the Sept. 11 attack. In another cable on Sept. 11, hours before the attack, Mr. Stevens described “growing problems with security” in Benghazi and “growing frustration” with the local militias and police, to which the State Department had entrusted the consulate’s defense. Separately, according to a report on ForeignPolicy.com, Mr. Stevens may have dispatched a letter to Benghazi authorities, complaining that a policeman assigned to guard the consulate was photographing it on the morning of Sept. 11.

Even if you believe what the Post is willing to, that the ultimate US response was all that could be mustered (there seems to be evidence to the contrary due to assets being available in Italy and a drone flying overhead), they still ask the key question:

…why [were] the various agencies … not better prepared for such an emergency, given the clear warnings. Did the Obama administration’s political preoccupation with maintaining a light footprint in Libya lead to an ill-considered reliance on local militias, rather than on U.S. forces? Given the region’s instability, why were no military rapid-reaction assets — such as Special Forces or armed drones — within reach of Northern Africa?

While the agencies separately defend themselves — or not — the White House appears determined to put off any serious discussion of Benghazi until after the election. Sooner or later, however, the administration must answer questions about what increasingly looks like a major security failure — and about the policies that led to it.

Yes, it appears to be a major security failure, resulting from seriously flawed policies. But “sooner or later” is not really satisfactory to me, since I firmly believe that how the Obama administration planned for, responded to, and reported about this event is highly relevant to whether we should be voting for President Obama’s re-election.

Tomorrow’s Washington Times, according to the Washington Free Beacon, will include a full page ad of 500 admirals and generals who support Mitt. Says the Free Beacon:

Nearly 500 former military admirals and generals are poised to endorse Mitt Romney…

The group will post a full page ad in the Washington Times on Monday. The advertisement will have the headline, “We, the undersigned, proudly support Governor Mitt Romney as our nation’s next President and Commander-in-Chief,” followed by the names of the former military commanders.

A spokesman for the group emphasized its independence from the official campaign. The Romney campaign has not sanctioned this ad buy, a spokesman said, and the members of the group are paying the fee themselves.

[Emphasis added]

Here’s the ad:

The Free Beacon also links to a story in the Military Times reporting that in a survey of 3,100 of the professional core military, Mitt is favored 2:1 over Obama. Among those that provide the “blanket of freedom,” that’s not even close.